Catfinity is the infinite ability to simultaneously be adorable, charming, exasperating and frustrating.
Anyday and Everyday
Everyday has a feel. Lot of that feel is conditioned into us by work and school. It’s hard to shed the feel.
Today is Thursday but feels like Friday. I could blame it on my friends. Fifteen of us met last night and hoisted a few beers. I enjoyed the Caldera Brewing Pilot Rock Porter, a most excellent beverage. I had two point five points so I don’t believe that’s the problem with today.
I worked and exercised, of course. Walked six miles, which is about my average, so no great shakes there. Had roasted veggie pizza for dinner. I don’t think that’s the problem nor why today feels like Friday.
No, I believe my problem resides with less than sufficient sleep. The Fitbit reports I had less than six and a half hours. For that, I blame the cats.
The four of them seemed very very. I don’t know what – very very catish? They ate their food and wanted more. They were inside and wanted out. Then, OMG, it’s cold outside, LET ME IN! Hearing the others, they would present a need to go investigate to see what HE’s up to without knowing who HE is. The four are male cats, felines who wandered in from the streets and declared our house is their house. Each has one issue or another.
My wife claims a big problem is that they’re all males, full of themselves and territorial. “It would be different if one of them was a female. Cats are matriarchal. A female would create some order.”
She could be right but I’m not getting a fifth cat to prove it. There is a fifth, a female. Pepper lives next door but loves our front porch and hangs out there about twelve hours out of a twenty-four hour period. She doesn’t seem to be establishing any order. Her only thought to order is, “Hey, hey, hey, give me something to eat. Hey, hey.” And I do because cats have established mind control over me.
So it feels like Friday because I feel tired. I’m ready for the weekend even though the weekend has no concrete meaning for me. It’s just Saturday after Friday, and Sunday after Saturday, and the day before Monday. Other than the spelling of the days and the hours of some businesses, they’re all Anyday and Everyday.
Okay, rant over. Got my mocha. Tastes awesome. Another sip or two and I’ll be ready to write like crazy, at least one more time. I’ll see where the story takes me.
I just realized that in the space of my future, there are no days of the week. It’s all Anyday and Everyday.
Imagine that.
Catchair
Catchair: the act of stealing another’s seat when they vacate it. Example: “My sister catchaired the recliner when I got up to get another beer.”
The origins are believed to reside with the observation that cats will often take people’s chairs as soon as the chair is vacated, and refuse to give it up.
There Ain’t No Writer’s Block
I like Bob’s approach to this: don’t think of it as what to write but address it as ways to solve a problem. I believe too many address writing blocks as, “I don’t know what to write.” But think of it as a logic problem, “What happens next?” Or, to expand how it can be addressed, the who, what, when, how, where and why can be asked. “Why did that happen? Who did it? Who did they do it to?” These are the ways I use to cope when the funnel narrows and the words flow more slowly.
After all the hoo-ha about publishing, it’s a good idea to get back to writing, don’t you think? I hear many would-be writers say they have some great ideas but don’t know where to start when it comes to committing those ideas to the written page. So here’s my opinion on that with a sample process and some random examples:
- Make a statement on a blank piece of paper that encapsulates you idea.
- On a new sheet of paper write a locale for the idea. If it has grandma’s fried chicken, iced tea, and maybe watermelon, you might want to place it in the Southeast U.S. Or maybe set the idea in Montana, with thoughts of the good ol’ Southeast. If boots come to mind, and maybe a steak, you can’t go wrong placing it in the rural Southwest U.S.
- Who is gathered around grandma’s dining table, or in her kitchen? Name…
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Up My Game
In what I must consider one of my strangest dreams ever, I dreamed I was a running back in the NFL.
It was the off-season, and we – running backs – were being tested. I didn’t know this, though. The whole thing was unfolding in the dream.
I was approached by a man in athletic gear. Holding a stopwatch and clipboard, he asked me to run a course. I didn’t know who he was or why.
The course was in a high school slash…ummm…hotel. I was to run the course through the halls.
It was a funny request to me. I was in my late teens in the dream. “Okay.” Shrug. It seemed strange, but what the hell.
Only after I ran it did I begin to realize that it was a test. Players, coaches, owners and sports announcers were staying in the high school slash hotel. Then I realized the test was about rating NFL running backs. With that, I experienced memories of being in NFL games. I didn’t have many touches but I had a high yards per touch score. Watching film in my head, I saw how I could improve.
Eventually, hanging around and talking with different people, I confirmed that I was an NFL running back and we were being rated from one to thirty-two. I was eight rankings from the bottom. Doing some dream math, I determined that meant I was twenty-fourth. Not a great score, but hey, I was an NFL player with no idea how he achieved that.
I immediately began visualizing how I could improve my rating by upping my game, how to better protect the quarter then cut into the flat as another passing option. I saw how I could change the way I see the field, watch for blocks, be more patient and cut more explosively. I was dismayed that I was only five foot eight and one hundred and forty pounds but determined I could gain weight.
Then I spilled a glass of water on a carpet in a room in the dream, and the dream ended.
The glass had been half full.
Pram
I reached that point. I went into the novel, strolled around the forest of words and found the trails I’d marked. One was marked Pram.
What was I to do with Pram? No, that was a flawed position; what will Pram do and what will happen to him? Walking about after writing yesterday, I reviewed what he’d done and what had happened.
Then Pram spoke up. He knew what was to happen, what he was to do, his role in the greater arc. He understood how he’d not understood himself, how he’d sheltered himself and hid, safely in the middle despite his colossal size, happy to be considered above average but just far enough above average to gain some trust and some attention, but not too much. He saw better than me how his personality and quiet choices of non-choices dictated his endpoint, and he saw how others saw him and had recognized, accepted and planned for his inadequacies. That directed his destiny. He saw it as not giving up, but as acquiescing.
He dictated a few thoughts to me. These sentences were the seeds that sowed the scene and grew into a chapter, becoming a turning point.
I compared him to me afterward, seeing the similarities and differences, how much of myself was vested in him. He’d been a good corporate soldier but could not stretch himself enough to seek another beginning. He didn’t fear new beginnings but didn’t care for them. He’d had new beginnings before. They hadn’t worked out. He was tired of trying.
He lived almost one hundred years. His parents remained alive and together, and the latter was unusual in Pram’s era. He’d been born well-to-do and had been comfortable in his role. He thought he loved his work. Turned out he’d been placating himself about what he believed and accepted. But then came an unfolding of his protections, welcoming a new understanding of himself. Gladly he went on, happy to understand who he was.
Each of Us
Awake in bed for a while, I considered the day’s agenda. I thought of my coffee shop routine and the other regulars like me the baristas encounter. I hear banter similar to mine with the baristas going on. They have a patter with everyone. I know the regulars’ faces and routines, and some of their surface stories. People who live in vans and come in to buy food and coffee and use the coffee shop’s free computer and Internet. Others with little resources doing the same but reading paperback books. Walkers who use the coffee shop as a rest and turn-around point.
Writers, of course, on computers or with books and notebooks. Students, of course, on computers or with books and notebooks. City council members. Southern Oregon University professors. High school teachers. Old liberals and old conservatives. Conversations, observations and declarations bounce around.
Police officers come by, and firefighters. Professors meet and discuss syllabi and surveys. The French teacher conducts her lessons, the Spanish teacher gives her instructions, the counselor consoles the suicide survivor, the financial adviser discusses bankruptcies with clients, the wedding planner shows people binders, crying people confess their worries and despair, the Christians discuss the Bible and the world, and boyfriends and girlfriends and young couples do what has always been done while old friends and couples visit with memories of one another.
That’s perhaps a third of what I witness happening here, in one coffee shop, in one neighborhood during a typical week. Zoom out with your lens and pick up the neighborhoods and other coffee shops. Expand your field of sight to the whole town, and consider the same scenes in other towns, cities, states and nations.
Look at the pubs and restaurants and include their routines. Widen the angle to consider the Internet, blogs and forums, and how each of us is different together and yet the same, how we’re individuals but also a breathing, thinking organism spreading around the world, burrowing into the Earth and reaching out into space.
Time for some coffee so I can start thinking straight.
Catfeinated
The state of having so much caffeine in you that your pupils grow large, and you run around the house like you’re out of control.
Catmentation
People with cats are familiar with catmentation, the position taken by felines that anything being done is better accomplished with at least one cat to supervise activities.
Today’s Theme Music
Today’s song comes to me via my wife. I’d forgotten this song but she mentioned it as a great energetic walking song. Here, from 2003, is Outkast with ‘Hey Ya!’. Whenever it plays on the radio and we’re driving, she orders, “Turn it up!” Which I do. This version, of the Peanuts gang dancing to the music, cracks me up.
Michael Seidel, writer 